NPC Classes, a slight tweak

[Kweezil]

When I was surfing A'Koss's website a few days ago I noticed his take on the Commoner (1d4hp + 1d4/2 levels, BAB and saves +0 and do not advance), and it occurred to me that this way a solution to the problems of the NPC classes. IMHO, they're a good idea, but they don't quite fit their roles. Aside from the warrior, they're all too good at actual combat, have too many hit points etc. meaning you can't make a properly skilled blacksmith (for example) without him being a serious combatant too.

This is what I've got: http://www.flamewarriors.net/~kweezil/rules/npcclasses.htm
Apologies for the incomplete website, it's a work in progress.

 

[gpetruc]

The fact that NPC classes have decent combat stats in D&D IMHO is due to the fact that the world is full of monsters, and expecially those who live in small villages or travel in roads through the wilderness may face attacks often (for example merchants)
In Star Wars d20 is the opposite: while most commoners won't have faced any danger in their life, in combat they would always last no more than a few rounds.

I think the Adept should be stronger, as it is the main spellcaster in monstrous cultures, and he'll probably have to live in bad conditions, experience frequent fights and/or assassination attemts.

 

[Drawmack]

I like your ideas and your tweaks. Though I would recommend a formatting change. Under you HD column I can see people misinterpretting this as how many you get to roll at that level. I would recommend that you change this column to be +xdy. Then x can go between 0 and 1 at each level.

 

[Nifft]

I don't think that NPC classes suffer from being too strong. They still mostly suck.

IMC, which is a default D&D level of magic and monsters world, there are no standard NPC classes -- there are house-ruled Experts and Aristocrats, which are as strong as PC classes, becuase anyone weaker would be dead by now.

-- Nifft

 

[Kweezil]

In my opinion the NPC classes are very basic archetypes, and that's what my tweaks are trying to represent. The commoner is the average joe and the absolute baseline which everyone has to go through before reaching any other class, the expert represents training in a particular field of expertise, the warrior represents combat training, the thug represents minor training in criminal activities* and the adept represents hedge magery and acolytes rather than the standard primitive spellcaster (that's what the Shaman's for). I don't use the aristocrat at all, that's the job of an Expert subclass or the Noble core class.

The Hit Dice progression is listed in the same way as the racial classes in Savage Species, and the rest of the clas abilities in the core books. Personally, I don't like the +0/+1 system, IMHO it's harder to read the progression, but I'll put a note in the general notes at the top of the page, just to be sure.

Nifft and gpetruc commented on how dangerous the world is and how even NPCs need combat ability to survive. IMHO that's covered by multiclassing. If they need to be able to fight, for example if they're living on the frontier or in a dangerous neighbourhood, they'll take levels in warrior. The average person in the city or his safe farm in the middle of ther kingdom's heartlands doesn't really need much combat ability.


* Oops, fergot to credit Fantasy Flight's Traps and Treachery for the Thug. D'oh.